Liquid crystalline phase transitions in confined geometries

Abstract

Investigations on liquid crystals confined in restricted geometries have been attracting significant attention in the past few years. The voids in the confining matrix could be highly regular as in the case of membranes like Anopore, Nuclepore, etc. or an irregular network like in the case of aerogels. Here we describe the results of our recent experimental investigations on different phase transitions when the liquid crystal is confined in the voids of the Anopore membranes. Examples discussed involve melting in lower dimensions and paraelectric to ferroelectric transitions.